Once We Were Witches

By Sarah Driver and Fabi Santiago

A spellbinding new middle grade series crackling with magic and adventure, perfect for fans of Starfell, Nevermoor and A Pinch of Magic.

I am Spel. Daughter of witches. The only one who can step between worlds. The only one who can save my sister. If I can find her before the witch hunt begins …

Thirteen years ago, magic was banished and the witches were hunted. Sisters Spel and Egg are the daughters of witches, but they grow up in Miss Mouldheel’s School for Wicked Girls with no idea who they really are. Until the day the message arrives telling them to run …

The message sends them to a funeral parlour in a far away village – and their new guardian, the Undertaker, has a secret. Beneath the funeral parlour is a portal to the Other Ways – four worlds that lie parallel to ours. When Egg vanishes through the portal, Spel knows she must try to save her sister. But no one can step between the worlds – or can they?

The first in a new fantasy adventure series with a witchy twist from the author of The Huntress trilogy

PRAISE FOR THE HUNTRESS

Sea
'A glorious world, a wild adventure and a fierce heroine. I can't stop thinking about this book!' – Robin Stevens, author ofMurder Most Unladylike

Sky
'Driver's prose takes flight in Huntress: Sky. Exhilarating, gripping and full of heart' Kiran Millwood Hargrave, author of The Girl of Ink and Stars

Storm
'A thrillingly wild adventure that crackles with magic' Abi Elphinstone, author of Sky Song

As well as writing magical books for children Sarah Driver is also a qualified nurse and midwife. She is a graduate of the Bath Spa Writing for Young People MA, during which she won the Most Promising Writer prize. Sarah was born in West Sussex, where she still lives close to the sea with her street-wise ginger cat and her miniature lop-eared bunny.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins UK
• Release date: Jan 7, 2021
• ISBN: 9781405295550

Sarah Driver

Sarah Driver is a graduate of the Bath Spa MA in Writing for Young People, during which she won the United Agents Most Promising Writer prize in 2014.  She is also a qualified nurse and midwife. Sarah started writing stories as a small child and lists her influences as Spellhorn by Berlie Doherty, A Necklace Of Raindrops by Joan Aiken and the Carbonel books by Barbara Sleigh – those gorgeous, magical stories that create and nurture readers.

Book preview

PART ONE: MOULDHEELS1 Mistress Mouldheels’ School for Wicked Girls

‘All girls ooze sin.’ Deputy Headmistress Wolsley’s bonnet, high and round like a black moon, casts a shadow that trickles down her nose to pool in her lap. ‘But Wicked Girls, unless corrected, wield it like a weapon.’

The taint of my Wickedness itches all over me. This is ceremony day, the most vital in our calendar. On this day, one Wicked Girl shall receive her soul. And my sister is not here. Panic turns into a hot sickness that threatens the back of my throat. I last saw her at lunch, before we went to afternoon duties. But she was missing from the register check before we filed into the assembly hall.

She’ll be skinned alive. They’ll have her guts for garters. How will Egg ever earn a soul of her own?

I sit on a bench in the hall with the rest of our dorm, dread coiled tight inside me. Mariam, Jameela and Isla all keep shooting me poisonous looks, as though it’s my fault Egg’s not here. Our whole dorm could be in trouble. Only Layla, Egg’s best friend, offers me a small, reassuring smile. Her warmth next to me is some comfort against the chill of the crowded hall.

But Isla leans forward, pretending to adjust her stocking. Fine strands of red hair have escaped her headscarf. ‘Egg’s for it now,’ she whispers, with a sharp-toothed grin. ‘And that means you are too, Spel.’

I stare at her.

‘Shut up,’ mutters Layla.

Mistress Wolsley’s stony gaze flickers to the empty space on our bench, where Egg should be. Her lips are crinkled and the flesh of her cheeks struggles to cling to the bones. When her eyes graze mine and linger there, I shrink deeper inside my skin.

The Mistresses have always thought I’m trouble, just because trouble is Egg’s speciality. So however much I work and however hard I pray, I’ll never escape the Wrythe name. I was one when we came here. Egg was three. She’s all the family I’ve ever known. What if she’s done something really stupid this time? I feel sicker with every second that passes.

‘Your parents were the worst sort of criminals, and our mission is to protect the Unwicked. As such, your sins must be cleansed.’ Wolsley breathes into the hush, letting her familiar pre-ceremony lecture swell against the walls.

Watching from the wall, a clock ticks away the seconds, polished glass face unfazed by my problems. I feel the eyes of the girls behind me burning into my neck. Everyone here knows that Egg and I are the daughters of a murderer, so most of them have always hated us. High and mighty because their parents did awful things that weren’t quite so awful as murder.

I fidget, biting the skin around my nail until blood bubbles up; lifting the edge of my coarse green headscarf to wipe the sweat that has dewed along where my hairline would be, if I weren’t as bald as a fig. The Mistresses sit in high-backed wooden chairs on the raised platform at the front of the hall. But one chair is always empty – a grander one, with thick wooden arms and a velvet cushion. It belonged to Mistress Mouldheels herself.

Mistress Mouldheels is a figure of legend at this school, and the legends say her rule was comprised of a fiercer iron than the gates bearing her name. No one has ever seen her, and most of the girls think she must be dead by now.

But rumours drift along the cold corridors late at night, ragged as smoke. Rumours that she still stalks the hallways of this school, cursing the Wickedest of the Wicked Girls to a soulless eternity. One of the older girls swears she saw a shadow peel out of the walls to twist into her likeness. Egg says that girl is so hungry for attention that she fakes a different sighting every week. The girl fought Egg for saying it. Egg won.

‘It is only hard work that might purge you of your Wickedness, and make you worthy to receive a soul of your own.’

But we will never be free, whispers a traitorous voice in my head, shocking heat into my skin. A wild little voice, which every day I do my best to iron flat.

‘Three things will assist you in your work: discipline, obedience and atonement. Say it with me, girls.’

‘Discipline, obedience, atonement.’

The words are like cold, hard stones sitting in my mouth, smoothed by years of use.

‘Discipline, obedience, atonement.’

When I was younger, I didn’t understand why it mattered, not having a soul. I couldn’t feel the lacking in me. But now, at thirteen, I feel it every day, wriggling through my insides. I’ll do anything and everything I can to cleanse it. I’ll do whatever it takes to get my soul.

‘Discipline, obedience, atonement.’

‘Today we are gathered to bid farewell to Wicked Cecilia Norton.’ Mistress Wolsley pauses for effect, hands folded neatly in her lap. ‘Cecilia, step forward, please.’

I twist to watch as Cece steps down the aisle. Silent envy rises, filling the hall. Mine is sludgy: so thick it lodges in the throat and threatens to rot, like an infection of the lung.

She is dressed in a ceremonial gown of delicate white lace, which is long enough to trail gracefully behind her. Her face is draped with a veil. Her clogs have been exchanged for satin slippers, and on her head is perched a bonnet – a moon-shape identical to that of the Mistresses, but white as a pearl.

There are gasps, which go unscolded.

All eight of the Mistresses rise and flock to Cece. They propel her towards the basin near the front of the hall. Two of the Mistresses detach from the group and swoop to either side of the basin, lighting tall candles that show the rippling of the special water on the ceiling.

Mistress Wolsley and Mistress Baker stand just behind Cece, each placing a hand on her shoulders. ‘Cecilia Norton,’ one intones. ‘You have proven yourself dutiful, obedient and modest. Your determination to scrub your sins clean has earned you a chance to become soulful, this day. So it is.’

‘Let it be known,’ responds Cece, in a small, tremulous voice that’s nothing like the voice I’ve heard her use every other day of my life here.

‘Cleanse,’ calls one of the candle-lighting Mistresses.

The Mistresses fold Cece forward, until her head is swallowed by the dark and mysterious waters.

There are two types of girl in this school. Type one girls get really obsessed and determined to reach their soul-ceremony with as little trouble as possible. They are by far the commonest. But type twos self-destruct. Trends do the rounds, dares to do the stupidest things. Those girls always get caught. But we don’t always find out what happened to them.

I’m a type one, and Egg is a type two. My sister is a daredevil who lashes out, but I hold myself still, hoping I won’t be noticed. If I ever had a smidge of the wildness she has, I must’ve learned to keep it in.

Cece’s head emerges from the basin, smooth as a seal. She gasps, and splutters a little. Ceremonial water drips off the ends of her hair. The Mistresses begin to move in a circle around her. ‘Soul, instil this child with your purity,’ they chant. ‘Soul, find your home here, fill this child with your light. In exchange a sacred thread shall be woven, in the fabric of life. It is spoken.’

‘It is known!’ we Wicked ones murmur together, feverishly.

A Mistress takes Cece’s arm and leads her towards the red curtain at the very back of the hall. Cece moves the curtain just an inch, before ducking through. Every girl in the room twitches to try to see something – anything – beyond that curtain. But what lies beyond is dark, murky and closed off to us.

My own ceremony can’t come soon enough. I grind my teeth halfway into my jaw. I can’t wait to get dunked into that sacred broth. Then I’ll no longer be a Wicked Girl.

Beyond the window, storm clouds squat overhead, like tattered grey swans in a scowling sky. Rain lashes Mouldheels’ School, while the wind worries the towers. A fresh wave of fear for my sister rips through my body. And as suddenly as I feel the fear, the double doors bang open behind us.

We all turn to stare.

‘Wicked Meghan Wrythe has been found, Mistress!’ cries a voice.

A shape glides out of the shadows: a mass of heavy robes and even heavier disapproval. Mistress Turner. My hand is covering my mouth before I know I’ve moved it. Turner is a short, thin, pale Mistress, whose steely blue eyes are the only things that tell the full truth about her cold sternness. Why did she have to be the one to find Egg?

A man follows her – a strange enough sight in itself – and he’s dragging my sister by the arm.

‘Where was she?’ enquires Mistress Wolsley, almost sweetly.

Mistress Turner hesitates. ‘Hiding in the butcher’s cart, madam.’

‘The what?’

‘The meat is delivered on Wednesdays.’

Mistress Wolsley stares hard at my sister. ‘Clever girl.’

Egg is streaked in blood. As she passes our bench, she leaves behind a cloying, coppery stink. She spins and spits and struggles in the butcher’s grip like a cat with a caught claw.

Layla tenses and reaches instinctively for my hand. I meet her eyes for a second, searching for a sign that she knew something I didn’t. But I find the same betrayal on her face that must be showing in mine. Egg was trying to escape. What about us?

My sister’s teeth are bared and there’s a pink triangle stuck between them. It’s fleshy, and covered in bristly hairs. It takes me a second to realise she must have fought hard enough to bite the ear off a pig.

For one wild moment, laughter gurgles in my chest. My sister has a pig’s ear in her mouth. My sister tried to escape. My sister is drawing all the attention in the world to her, and handing it down to me.

No! I want to scream at her. Stop. They will punish us. But my voice stays trapped down deep, where I locked it long ago.

Egg spits the pig’s ear on to the floor. A girl shrieks.

‘Silence!’ roars Mistress Wolsley.

‘For god’s sake,’ pants the butcher, shining with sweat. ‘Will someone tell me what to do with it?’ His eyes slip around the room, touching us all with his disgust. The Unwicked know what we are. By it, he means my sister.

Egg’s breathing hard, with her hair stuck on end and her eyes shining like black jewels. ‘Get off me!’

There’s a cracking sound. A bolt of confusion ripples through the air. Then there’s a shattering, as one of the windows high in the wall smashes to bits. The people nearest are forced to duck, covering their heads as slivers of glass rain down.

The butcher lets go of my sister. A stillness descends. But my chest tightens when I look at Mistress Wolsley’s face. The butcher, the other Mistresses and the girls all wear the look of horrified fear usually reserved for large spiders. But Wolsley’s face gleams with a ravenous, gulping hatred that makes my insides shrivel. The truth rings inside my head, as clear as a struck bell.

Nothing will be the same again.

2 Blood Tells All

When they take Egg away, I stare at my feet, imagining where they’ll put her. The CLC – which stands for Confined Learning Centre – is a dark room in the crypt: the deepest of the seven floors of the school, where the tombs of long-passed Mistresses stand in judgement of the wickedest of the Wicked Girls. But my sympathy twists into a knife-edge of self pity.

How could she try to leave me here alone?

The rest of our dorm are sent to bed without supper. My stomach is already hollow and growling. We file past a group of cooks who are clustered near the foot of the back stairs, heads close together, gossip flurrying between them. They lean slightly away from us as one; a smooth, practised movement perfected by the Unwicked. We climb the huge spiral staircase curled at the heart of the school.

I can’t believe she didn’t even leave a note for me.

‘Watch it!’ whispers Jameela when I bump straight into her back, smacking my nose on her shoulder blade.

As soon as our door is closed, my dorm-mates swirl into a panic. Their voices are all stretched and distorted. It feels as though time slows down, like I’m watching from underwater. Isla grabs me by the shoulders and starts to shake me. ‘What did she tell you?’ she demands. ‘What do you know?’

Layla pushes Isla away. ‘Don’t be horrible,’ she says. ‘It’s not Spel’s fault.’ There are tears in her eyes.

‘I’m not saying it’s her fault,’ huffs Isla. ‘I just want to know what she knows about it! They’re going to grill all of us, you know.’

‘Nothing,’ I pipe up, my voice coming in tatters through the tears that pounce on me. ‘She didn’t tell me anything.’ And that’s the bit that hurts the worst, and the bit that fills me with shame.

‘She didn’t tell us because she thought it would protect us,’ says Layla confidently, resting a hand on my shoulder. I feel the clawing of a familiar hunger. I wish Layla would care about me for me, instead of just out of loyalty to Egg.

‘I can’t believe she got inside a stinking meat wagon!’ hisses Isla, shock splaying her eyes wide.

Layla snorts, cheeks dimpling. ‘I can.’

‘This isn’t funny, Layla,’ scolds Mariam.

‘It is a bit, though.’

‘Don’t you realise what she’s done?’ Mariam squeals, thumping her mattress with both fists in a fit of temper she’s never shown before.

‘Yes,’ says Layla. ‘Obviously!’

Jameela backs Mariam up. ‘I’m eighteen next month. I am this close to ceremony.’ She holds her fingers an inch apart. ‘If she’s set me back, I swear I will find her and kill her if they don’t do it first.’ She’s shaking with a frightened anger that looks like it’s pulling at her skin from the inside.

‘I don’t understand why she’d want to leave,’ says Mariam. ‘There is nowhere else for us.’

‘Haven’t you ever wondered what might be out there?’ asks Layla quietly.

Mariam stares.

‘She’ll get out of here soon enough,’ scathes Isla, who got utterly sick of Egg a long time ago. ‘But it’ll be in her own personal meat cart – a wooden box!’ She doesn’t bother to say her good riddance. It’s scrawled in the air.

‘Why are you so vile at the moment, Isla Thomas?’ demands Layla. But I can tell she’s trying to cover the fear that has filled the room.

‘Girls!’ Mariam briskly claps her hands. ‘Remember Henrietta.’

The name cuts like a knife, silencing everyone. Henri disappeared two years ago. She used to daydream so heavily the Mistresses had to shout to get her attention, and she was always late for everything. Then she walked out one summer evening to spend the night in a tree, hooting with the owls. We lay in our bunks, listening to those otherworldly utterances. The Mistresses let her stay out there all night. But the next morning, she was gone.

I close my eyes, Henri’s soft brown ones flashing into my mind. She had a laugh as bright as a bird, but it disappeared with her when she broke the rules, and no one ever heard it again. She was the only person I ever dreamed might one day want to be my friend.

‘And what’s-her-name, from two dorms down,’ says Layla. ‘The one that somehow smuggled in that magazine.’

‘Jenny?’

‘Jenna?’

‘Janey!’

‘That was so much fun,’ says Isla, wistful.

‘It was not!’ scolds Mariam, savagely.

The girl vanished, just like Henri. But not before the entire school had read the mag ragged. We all learned about lip balms and things called video games and pocket money – whatever that is.

‘D’you remember reading about besties and what to do if your old bestie gets a new bestie?’ asks Jameela.

‘Yeah,’ says Isla.

‘That’s like our word for closest,’ says Layla, nodding. ‘Like Jameela is closest with Maya and I’m closest with Egg.’

I can’t stop myself from flinching a little. No one is closest with me. Not even my own sister.

‘Maybe it’s not as bad as smuggling in a magazine,’ suggests Mariam, practical as ever. ‘What Egg did can’t affect other girls in the same way.’

‘But if they don’t punish her properly, others might try to escape,’ Jameela points out. ‘They’ll have to make an example of her.’

I feel like they’re discussing my sister’s fate as they would a pile of dishes to be washed. I want to scream.

‘She’ll be just another disappeared girl,’ whispers Isla. Her malice has evaporated like mist, leaving a cold, pure truth.

‘What was with that window smashing?’ asks Jameela.

Isla tips her head to one side, considering. ‘It was a Weird Thing.’

Fear prickles all over me as I stare at her. My stomach bloats with painful fear. Everyone knows that a Weird Thing happening in front of the whole school is so bad that it’s likely to unravel the very threads of Egg’s life. If not all our lives.

‘We have been overdue one,’ admits Jameela.

Everyone knows about the Weird Things, but the unspoken rule is that no one mentions them in public. When a Weird Thing happens, the whole atmosphere of the school changes. Girls get punished, if the Mistresses find out. We all know how much they hate them.

We always know when something is a Weird Thing.

Layla sometimes predicts what will happen before it does. Same goes for Aisha and her little sister Mimi.

Leila from another dorm (whose name sounds the same but is written differently) says she left her body last Thursday night, and flew around the school.

Mariam fell down a big flight of stairs last week, but landed light as a feather, without a bruise or a scratch.

Maya ran outside in a thunderstorm, but stayed bone-dry.

Latisha plucks words from your head before you’ve spoken them aloud.

Olivia sees the future in dreams.

Lily says she hears voices on the wind, and a month ago, Isla made it gust more fiercely – until the building was swallowed in a hurricane. Amelia and Marli-Mae fix their eyes on the light they say glows around people’s shoulders.

And when Egg gets angry, she can make stuff move. Last month, when a girl called Ruby threw a bar of soap at her head, Egg held up her hands, and the soap hurled itself back at Ruby, blackening her eye.

As for me? They say I’m my sister’s shadow, living in my own world, somewhere apart from the world of the living. The most spiteful ones say I’m invisible. I’m not sure that’s a Weird Thing, though.

There’s a thump on the window. We flex towards the sound.

Outside in the early dark, a black thing beats against the glass. It thumps and struggles, as though trying to worm its way inside. Isla swears, scuttling backwards on her bunk.

‘What’s that?’ asks Jameela.

Mariam climbs stiffly to her feet and approaches the window.

‘No, don’t!’ gasps a collection of voices.

The windows in the dorms are high and barred, but we can open them a few inches by climbing on to the sill and propping open the iron handle. ‘It must be a bird.’ Mariam’s hands are on her hips and her legs are planted firmly. But she steps no closer to the window.

Then the thing struggles again, thrashing against the glass. It turns and stretches in the air, wet wingtips pushing against the pane, which seems suddenly too thin a membrane between us and the awful, strange things of the world.

‘Oh, for god’s sake.’ Layla stands, brushes past Mariam and pushes the window open, knocking whatever it is away into space. But as she’s pulling the window closed, the thing – the bird? Though it’s much too dark to say – shoots back towards our room again. The girls shriek, swear, beg. Layla slams the metal latch closed and jumps down from the sill, breathing hard.

The shadowy black scrap releases a sound that rings off the stone floor. An unearthly screech. Then it wheels around, gathering a clot of night in its wings, and disappears. But where its scream touched the glass, a circle appears, etched in the frost. It comes about as though an invisible finger is drawing it there.

The heels of a Mistress tap-tap-tap along the corridor and stop outside our dorm.

3 The CLC

The door opens. Mistress Turner steps into the room, face fixed in a cold grimace. We all stiffen. I feel the blood drain down into my toes. Her eyes fasten on me.

Oh no. My whole body turns hot and then cold. My hands start to sweat.

‘Why’d you want her?’ blurts Layla. ‘She didn’t have anything to do with it.’

Mistress Turner glances at Layla. A look I don’t understand passes across her face – an almost soft look? But then her whole body grows taut with barely suppressed rage. ‘I don’t think you’re really in a position to speak to me like that, Wicked Layla Dixon.’

And there’s nothing else Layla can do. My stomach tightens. I find myself shaking and covering my mouth with my hand.

Mistress Turner grasps me by the shoulder and marches me into the corridor. I swiftly bend double and vomit all over her shoes.

She lifts one lace-up brown leather shoe, then the other, with delicate distaste. My weirdly yellow sick has splattered everywhere. ‘Oh, Elspeth.’ She snaps her fingers. ‘Dorm, get this cleaned up, please. Then you can all get back to your duties.’

As we’re led down the corridor, Isla’s voice floats after us. ‘Brilliant.’

Turner’s fingers dig hard into the fleshy part of my shoulder, making me wince. ‘Blood will out, Miss Wrythe. Blood tells all.’

Blood will out. They really do think I’m just as bad as my sister.

‘If either of you ever steps out of line again, I will personally see to it that you suffer enough to atone for a hundred girls’ sins. Then, you will never have enough years in your life to make yourself clean, and you will never leave this institution. Do I make myself clear?’

I feel like I’m disappearing, through a crack in the floor. ‘Yes, Mistress.’

She leads me all the way down to the ground floor, past girls polishing the banisters or carrying loads of laundry. ‘This way,’ she instructs, ushering me around the bend of the stairwell, to the stairs that lead down to the basement. At the bottom of the stairs, we round another curve – and Mistress Turner leads me down the final level